


The Brilliant Dream

by aabbey



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:07:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5475605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aabbey/pseuds/aabbey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few years after Voyager's return, a junior lieutenant observes Janeway on an administrative posting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Understand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kelly_chambliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelly_chambliss/gifts).



> I began this story years ago for Kelly's HP fandom anniversary celebration, as a throwback to her Voyager days. Thank you, Kelly, for years of fandom friendship. Thanks to Lash for betaing an incomplete version. 
> 
> This is pretty much a Mary Sue loosely structured on outdated (but poetic) military doctrine, and the title is from an Indigo Girls song. It contains college angst, dissing of the Prime Directive, booze and bad dancing, and mild voyeurism.

“Battle command is the art and science of understanding, visualizing, describing, directing, leading, and assessing forces to impose the commander’s will on a hostile, thinking, and adaptive enemy. Battle command applies leadership to translate decisions into actions—by synchronizing forces and war fighting functions in time, space, and purpose—to accomplish missions. Battle command is guided by professional judgment gained from experience, knowledge, education, intelligence, and intuition. It is driven by commanders.”

—Field Manual 3-0, 2008

i. Understand

Several years ago, I served as an admiral’s aide on a large starship. The name of the ship doesn’t matter. Neither does the name of the admiral. He was a good man—he tried to be reasonable with his requests, to respect my off-time, and he helped me get the next posting I wanted. I never had to collect him from a dabo girl’s quarters or reserve him pornographic holosuites—those were stories I heard from other aides. Our ship traveled throughout the Alpha Quadrant on diplomatic missions, meeting with dignitaries and leaders from various planets. Negotiating trade agreements. Trying to prevent or resolve border skirmishes. Reiterating Federation talking points and Providing a Presence. The ship was swarming with brass; a four-stripe admiral, two three stripes, several two stripes, a bunch of one stripes. I saw three captains before breakfast every morning. And I was a young lieutenant, newly promoted after my first deep space assignment. Back here for what was deemed to be a “decompression” mission.

I stayed busy the first few weeks. There were protocols to learn, statements to write, travel documents to read. I had no idea how the admiral wanted me to give him his morning briefings, or how much of his personal business he wanted attended to for him. Should I replicate him a hot beverage in the morning? Did he want to get it himself? My predecessor had been a laid-back senior lieutenant with a shaggy haircut who hadn’t passed on any particulars to me. Even if he hadn’t been getting out of Starfleet, I don’t think he would have stressed much about the details of delivering exactly what the admiral wanted. He didn’t think that way—but I couldn’t help how I was wired. I needed to do everything right.

So in the beginning, I suppose I sometimes pinged around the ship like a plebe, trying to deliver messages and not look lost. It was a huge ship, with decks like labyrinths and senior officers gossiping around every corner. Even as I chided myself that I wasn’t an ensign anymore, I couldn’t quite turn off the low hum of anxiety that crept in around the edges of my waking hours. This didn’t feel like what I had known on my last assignment, didn’t feel like some kind of a replacement home, and I could not yet feel truly at ease. Still, I knew that this would pass. Knew that nothing on this ship could match the outright fierceness of purpose and frenetic struggle for the mission, hell for existence, I’d known as an ensign. But that I would adapt to it. Do it well. Though I could feel a dawning realization: this wasn’t going to be enough. I was soon going to be very bored.

About two months into my posting I saw her for the first time. By that time the jitters of the job had worn off almost entirely and I was walking with a deliberate, measured pace. I knew how my admiral took his tea and when he wanted it, and he generally only had one or two corrections to the situational updates I wrote for him. I could joke with the commanders and captains in my section and wheedle my way to the front of the replicator line. Every morning I got up and tried to imagine myself as a Starfleet recruiting advertisement—a young woman doing meaningful work, exploring the galaxy, seeing things others would never see, learning valuable skills. Some days the stars aligned and I felt like I was this invisible, mythic person. Other days she seemed like a ridiculous lie.

I can’t say that Admiral Janeway was smaller than I’d imagined. I mean, she technically was. The first thing I noticed was that her hands seemed almost child-like and incongruously delicate, given the life history we’d all heard about her—she held a padd in front of her as she strode into our daily briefing room. But her shoulders were relatively broad and square, and she overtook me entirely as she brushed by me and sat at the chair at the far end of the table, next to me. “Am I stealing anyone’s seat, Lieutenant Paltin?”

That famed, roughly tender voice, saying _my_ name, sent a charge through me with the intensity and velocity of a tachyon burst. I took a quick, deep breath.

“No admiral, of course not. How do you know—”

“He speaks highly of you. Admiral Baker. Wants to see you take a tactical command.”

“Oh. I had no idea.”

She laughed, a rich, deep laugh that stirred an ache in my chest. A longing. I couldn’t say exactly for what.

“You’ll learn that he’s not the most forthcoming individual. But he’ll take care of you. We go way back.”

“No complaints, ma’am. Very happy with my posting.”

Admiral Janeway regarded me then for a long moment. I tried not to squirm visibly. She was piercing me with her eyes, reading me with ease. I felt naked, felt that she knew exactly what I was thinking, knew how I reasoned, knew what I would say before I said it. She knew my dis-ease and boredom. Knew that nothing here would make me truly happy.

And she just turned and smiled to herself.

*

I didn’t see Admiral Janeway again for another week or so. She was a junior admiral, and like I said, there were a bunch of them on the ship. She was too junior for an aide of her own. But she was Janeway, barely three years removed from the Delta Quadrant. And so gossip on the ship spread quickly about her. Some said she’d gone mad and this was intended to be a kind of pre-retirement shakedown cruise. Others said she was clearly performing some kind of covert function, probably involving our scheduled visit to Romulus.

Late one night I was sitting in the lower decks mess hall. Well, what passed as the lower decks mess hall. There was so much rank on this ship that it was informally lieutenants and below. I liked not tripping over captains and admirals. I stared at the stars, failing to finish a particularly flavorless casserole. The mess hall was deserted, except for a Bolian crewman in the corner working on a complicated spatial puzzle. Shift changeover had happened half an hour ago, and the masses had scarfed down their pre-shift meals and left in a hurry. Those coming off shift had gone to sleep, I presumed. I was trying to work out whether or not I was happy. I mean, broadly speaking individual days had high points and low points. But I didn’t know if this was the happiest I could be. If I got out of Starfleet, went somewhere else, worked on my own…would any of this change? Would anything make more sense?

The doors hissed open and Admiral Janeway walked in. She went to a replicator and came back with a squat glass of amber liquid. She sat down at my right shoulder and looked out at the stars.

“Planning the next summit, lieutenant?”

“No admiral, just thinking. Nothing work-specific.”

“Oh?”

“You know—space, exploration, Starfleet, happiness, what makes it all worth it in the long run. If it is. For me, I mean.” I panicked for a moment, having said all this. I wasn’t supposed to be having this conversation with her. Or anyone, really. But then she wasn’t supposed to be in my mess hall drinking an alien whisky at one in the morning.

“A good bunch of thoughts to have.” She paused. “And you know that only you can answer those questions for yourself. In time.”

I swallowed. I knew this. I had always known this. “How will I know when that time comes? If it comes?”

“Oh, you’ll know. You will.”

The ice cubes in her glass clinked loudly in the silence of the mess hall. I wanted to ask her to stay. I wanted to ask her why she was doing this, why she had twice now approached me and treated me with abnormal interest and kindness. But I didn’t, because I knew. Knew that _this_ was one of her reasons. One of the reasons that made Starfleet worth it. For her.

Janeway let me mull this over for a few moments. Then she spoke.

“One day, it will only be you. It will only be you. There will be no reinforcements, there will be no sister ship. There will be no Starfleet within hailing range. It will only be you and how you react to a crisis, to an unforeseen circumstance, to a tactical dilemma. It will only be you, and what you have learned, and your trust in yourself and those under you. And you will be ready.”

She reached over and gripped my shoulder. I was kind of surprised. I had known feeling like this, touch like this, on my old ship, but not here. I tried not to move. “You will,” she said.

With that moment over, she let go of my shoulder, and stared at the stars again, drinking her whisky. But I figured she was already in some kind of state, the kind where maybe she’d consider speaking to me candidly. Not that she hadn’t already—but I hadn’t orchestrated any of that. I wanted to learn her secrets. I wanted to know what she knew from being stranded in space for seven years—not just the technical aspects of it, but all of the messy, crew-related, personally-difficult aspects of it as well. I wanted to know it all. I certainly had no right to ask to know any of it. But I endeavored to try.

“They teach your alliance in the Void to senior cadets,” I said. “Use it as an example of how holding fast to our Federation principles is still necessary in a ‘changing galaxy in an era of persistent conflict.’”

She half-chuckled. “And how did that lesson go over with your classmates?”

“Mixed, I guess. Some found it inspiring. Others found it unrealistic, contrived. I guess they resented what the brass was trying to teach. The attempt at indoctrination, or whatever.”

“And you?”

“I was just glad that it worked. And it was comforting, I guess. Seeing that sometimes doing the right thing can work.”

She went to the replicator and got another whisky. Sat back down next to me and leaned back in her chair.

“I didn’t always do the right thing, you know,” she paused, nearly sighing. “Tried my best to, though. Mostly, I just tried to get my head around the situation. To understand what the alien or crewmember had, tactically, and what they wanted. What they valued. What my own ship possessed, and what it needed. And then I’d work for the simplest solution. The simplest solution that supported my mission, of course.”

I wondered about that mission. Wondered how difficult it had been to cling to an idea that had probably seemed nearly impossible on its best days and delusional on its worst. I couldn’t find the words to casually, politely, ask about that. I don’t suppose there were any. I didn’t really know what to say, but figured I could bring my own story back into this until I felt out the boundaries of appropriate conversation with this woman. At the moment, I found them distressingly nebulous.

“On my last assignment…I think it was most frustrating for me when I knew, almost in my gut, all of the steps or the one crazy power inversion that needed to be done to get the ship back online, or to repel a hostile force, and to have to back up and explain it to everyone else on shift, when it was so clear to me. I wound up…doing too much on my own. And sometimes I made mistakes, taking on too much.”

She nodded, responded slowly. “It’s a hard instinct to fight, especially when you’ve grown up with a background in the technical side. But it prevents your subordinates from growing. Prevents your crew from becoming more cohesive. I was guilty of it many times, especially early on. And sometimes it saved my ship. The issue is knowing when.”

I nodded. But I wondered—just when would this magical time occur—the time when I would know I’d chosen the right path, would know when to back down and when to push harder, when to ask for help and when to do it myself?

“Admiral, I did well on my first assignment. I know I missed the war by choosing to go on an exploratory vessel, but I accomplished a lot. I salvaged missions gone wrong on multiple occasions. And still, there’s so much I know now that I wish I had figured out earlier. I feel a little conflicted about that time period. And I miss it.”

She set down her glass. I couldn’t read anything behind her steady gaze. “Yes, of course you do. But something happened to you out there. Something always happens. You don’t come back the same person. And that’s what this is for”—she waved her hands around the mess hall—“this is to give you time to figure it all out.” I sensed an edge of darkness in her voice, or maybe it was only the whisky catching in her throat.

My skin prickled with something like static electricity. I could only nod.

The stars seemed to wink at me. They had to be laughing. Laughing at my all-too predictable need to be in orbit of someone older and stronger, someone who could draw me in and explain it all. I was doing better, I reasoned. I was growing up. I hadn’t messaged my old captain in nearly six months. He was somewhere in the Gamma Quadrant, I heard. I didn’t even know where. And I could learn from this woman. Learn good things. And still be my own person. And weren’t we all subject to each other’s gravity, in a way?

I thought about asking Admiral Janeway if she was going back into space. If she was slotted for another command, and this was her own time to “figure it all out.” But seeing her head tilted back in that starlight, the set of her jaw, the slight furrow of her brow, I knew there could only be one answer to that question.

I stood up slowly and picked up my tray. “Well, good night, admiral,” I said. “I hope I’ll see you around.”

“Yes,” she said, taking the last sip from her glass. “I’ll be around.”


	2. Visualize

ii. Visualize

A large, relatively slow ship full of high-ranking officials—what is termed a high value space-borne asset—does not fly through space unescorted. At any time there were three, sometimes four, leaner tactical ships flying in formation with us. They rotated out every two months or so.

I caught a glance of a captain I hadn’t seen before in the replicator line one morning shortly after an escort rotation. He was having a conversation with a chief about what I assumed to be his ship’s warp core. He was tall, tan-skinned. Dark, slightly graying hair. He seemed familiar somehow, but I couldn’t place him.

The usual crowd was milling around in front of the conference room, waiting for the doors to open for the morning briefing. Admiral Janeway stood two or three people away from me, studying her notes. When she looked up and saw this new captain smiling over her, she nearly dropped her padd in an effort to get her arms around him as quickly as possible. They both laughed excitedly, and the whole cluster of assembled meeting-goers turned to watch the spectacle. They seemed oblivious, certainly past caring about the mild impropriety of embracing in uniform. He bent and kissed her cheek. I watched her arms tighten around his back.

“It took you long enough, _Captain_ ,” she said, as the doors to the conference room opened and the assembled group filed in.

Now I remembered him. Janeway’s first officer on _Voyager_. There had been a three-year anniversary of their return story on the newsfeeds some months ago—he’d recently married a civilian—a Betazoid woman. In the photo provided to the program she had been smiling warmly—curvaceous, youthful, relaxed. Now, walking alongside a woman as different from his wife as I could imagine, Captain Chakotay grinned almost as deeply as he had in that photo, and his face was alight with something—with a joy I found I wanted to remember, to capture and keep for another day.

During the meeting I tried not to watch them too obviously. It was difficult, because the captain running the meeting droned on and on. And there was an easy kind of comfort between Janeway and this man. Padd passing that probably escaped all but a few attendees’ eyes. Leaning over to gesture at each other in unison, at the end of the same pointless, drawn-out sentences.

I thought of my crew partner from my first ship. Of how easy it was to become nearly one another’s entire world, on a ship like that. I thought of how Rick and I used to crash all the bars on Risa together with our crew of ensigns. Of several nights spent locked inside an alien jail cell together, frantically searching for any way out through a haze of exhaustion and hunger. Of how we’d finally broken out and deactivated the planet’s shields. Of how he knew everything I thought. Had seen me at my absolute, uncontrolled worst, had seen me lash out at him and his damned sensible, logical attitudes, had seen me fuck it all up—and how he still maintained some sort of faith or reverence or whatever it was for my thoroughly aggravating, brazenly emotional, warp-speed tactical mind. But it couldn’t last like that forever. After I vented to him one time too many and he called me on my unreasonableness, I cut myself off from him. Stopped telling him all my feelings. It wasn’t fair to him, I told him. And I wanted him to stop judging me. I wanted to stop demeaning myself, to stop telling him every negative, illogical thought I had. I wanted to present myself as the in-control, competent officer we both knew I was. To be a friend and confidante to my own self. I was due to change positions and shifts. And I did. And like that, it was pretty much over. Rick and I talked easily, we reminisced, but all of the intensity and closeness was gone. It was so easy, and strange—how someone who had been such a part of my life for so long was now little more than a wave and hello in the mess hall. I hadn’t even heard from him in a year. But I did miss him. Or I missed aspects of the friendship we’d had. And I was certainly no Janeway, but I wondered if we could have had what she and this captain appeared to have. If he’d stayed in.

I saw Captain Chakotay with some regularity during the two months his ship was assigned to escort ours. He seemed pleased, happy. Happy to just be around Admiral Janeway. I didn’t witness any of the romantic tension or drama between them hinted at by the newsvids since _Voyager’s_ return. Just general ease, and happiness at being able to share it.

I’ll confess that I’d been rereading Admiral Janeway’s _Voyager_ logs since our late night conversation in the mess hall. At this point, I was halfway through them. When I stopped to really think about the ship, to truly try and visualize its small size and its journey from the far end of the galaxy, it stunned me. The tactical skill and vision necessary for its survival. On so many occasions. Outsmarting alien xenophobes, demigods, and bounty hunters with little more than instinct and will. It was nearly unbelievable. And some still chose not to believe it.

Not everyone liked Admiral Janeway. She could be incredibly imposing, and she had a tendency to say what other senior officers wouldn’t. I saw her begin to dress down an operations lieutenant in a corridor off the bridge, and then walk him to an abandoned adjacent corridor. They disappeared from view, but the oncoming bridge crew and I could hear her voice continuing on, low and fierce. I was secretly pleased. This lieutenant was a dirtbag with a bad attitude, and his substandard work had bothered me for weeks. The rest of the bridge crew, naturally, did not share my opinion.

Corrections of this nature were not infrequent. And so sometimes, talk in the “lower decks” mess hall turned to Admiral Janeway’s questionable command decisions. Her alliance with the Borg. Her overzealous use of slipstream technology. Her treatment of the crew of the _Equinox_. And of course, her crazed older self’s decision to break every law in the book and change time itself to get _Voyager_ home. _How dare she so stringently enforce rules and regulations when she herself had broken all of them?_ And so the argument went. I never understood other officers’ fury at her violations of the Prime Directive. I had always considered it a shitty, condescending sort of law that humans would never tolerate were it to be applied to them. I guess I wrongly assumed that anyone else who had been in for more than a minute would share this view. Away from Starfleet, Admiral Janeway had been able to use her judgment to do the most good for the most people—sometimes interfering in the affairs of strangers or offering them aid, sometimes not. I thought about this strange kind of freedom Admiral Janeway had enjoyed somewhat frequently when I reread her logs. Her methods made much more ethical sense to me than some simplistic maxim designed to protect the Federation’s status as the Alpha Quadrant’s hegemon. The hegemon I worked for. But no matter.

I didn’t involve myself too deeply in these discussions or frequently make counterarguments. If peers couldn’t understand the difference between maintaining a work ethic to ensure the success of the mission and the ship’s safety, and making difficult decisions with moral principles actually in conflict, well they never would. Not at this point.

Instead, I tried to spend my time with hardworking, like-minded peers who didn’t piss me off, planning holodeck excursions and shore leave on resort planets. There was never enough time. Schedules never matched up, plans always changed, admirals always needed something back on the ship. I think my group of friends managed three such expeditions in the year I spent on the ship. Typically, I spent my meals with Michelle, another admiral’s aide. She came from a colony on Mars and had a kind of patience that continually surprised me. She’d spent her early career fighting the Dominion, and I marveled at her ability to be level-headed about it. “It’s really nothing really different than anything you saw, Emily,” she told me with a crooked grin.

Admiral Janeway became a kind of litmus test for me. I would sit back and wait for a newly-arrived aide’s opinion of Admiral Janeway to come out in conversation, and I would then judge his or her competence (and how much I could trust him or her) accordingly. At least for the time being, until such competence could be proven otherwise. Maybe this was wrong of me. But it worked with startling regularity.

I thought of myths I’d learned at the Academy. My Ancient Terran History professor had been a tough, handsome woman, badly injured in the Klingon wars. She walked with a cane and ran her class with a kind of sly showmanship that utterly captivated me. I was a plebe, and badly needed something to captivate me in what seemed to be a wasteland of cadet rules, cadet discipline, cadet stress, and cadet boredom. I was alternately angry at the system that created this bullshit, and angry at myself for not thriving within it. One day midway through our first semester, Captain Rodriguez taught us the myth of Medusa. Of her hair of snakes and eyes that would turn men to stone. I didn’t focus on her rape at the hands of the sea god or her subsequent punishment of beheading. Rather, it seemed fitting to me that the goddess of war used Medusa’s head as her shield, her Aegis. Or a mask to frighten away the unbelievers, the profane. Something clicked inside me, and I realized the furious, sometimes bewildering parts of a woman were as much a part of the history of human conflict as Athena herself. They could be controlled. They could be harnessed for good.

Around this time, we plebes chose our basic shuttle instructors. We could ask any officer at the Academy to fly with us every two weeks, to teach us basic skills and maneuvers. We would be tested at the end of the year. I was giddy with excitement when Captain Rodriguez agreed to be my shuttle instructor. Every other Thursday afternoon I would sprint down to the shuttle hangar and spend three blissful hours enclosed in her sureness, her intelligence. She taught me proper, confident communications etiquette. She told mischievous, winning stories of her own time at the Academy. She listened to what I knew were my silly, minor cadet problems, and advised me sincerely and carefully. Each time I brought the shuttle to warp I’d glance over at her. Her eyes reverent, never tiring of it. And she’d return my gaze, a small smile on her face.

When my relationship with Captain Rodriguez broke down, it hurt like nothing else. I’d overstepped my bounds. I wanted to spend more time with her than shuttle lessons and the occasional dinner afterwards with her family. My attraction to her was clichéd and obvious, I was needy and complicated, and that same unexpected vulnerability that drew me to her led her to find me another shuttle instructor late that winter. She said she didn’t have the time to keep teaching me, that it wasn’t fair to me.

I rarely spoke to Captain Rodriguez again. The History class was long over, and there was no reason or suitable pretext. I was careful not to show how much I’d been hurt. To be confident, energetic, winning. To be everything I knew she still wanted me to be. I passed my shuttle test easily. I worked harder. And I generally did well. Or at least better than I had. But even as I drew close to graduation, I wondered about Captain Rodriguez’s life. Her well-hidden sorrow at being sidelined into teaching, denied a ship of her own. Her damaged leg and the ready grin that too often masked what I knew to be a grimace of pain. Her inability to gently push me back, to teach me appropriate boundaries without rejecting me entirely. Of the toll Starfleet must have exacted, still exacted, from the very senior, who knew the worst of war and uncertainty. Of Captain Rodriguez’s husband and children, who I knew respected her career but could never fully understand it. Couldn’t understand the siren song of a shuttle’s engines as it slipped into warp under one’s fingers, one’s command. It was a hell of a thing to have shared. I was lucky. I was lucky to have shared it for the time I did, with the person I did, I told myself.

And so when I thought of Admiral Janeway’s occasional fury, I thought of Medusa on Athena’s shield. And I was careful not to ask anything of Admiral Janeway. Not to get too close. Not to talk to her too frequently. I didn’t want her to push me away, too.

*

Around this time, I took mid-tour leave on Earth. I was tired from fifteen-hour days and the stress of the job. I couldn’t wait to get on the shuttle. When I arrived on Earth my family fussed over me proudly. Mom co-opted me to work in the kitchen with her. My younger brother begged me to stay longer. Dad had projects and model automobiles for me to assemble with him outside. I danced with old friends at nearby nightclubs and took long hovercraft rides late at night. It was fun for a little while. But within a week I remembered all the reasons I’d been so eager to leave. It wasn’t what I wanted. Even as part of me dreaded returning to the ship, to the grind it entailed, I wanted to get back to work.

Home wasn’t home, and yet the ship wasn’t really home. I was already preparing for my next assignment. Where the hell was home supposed to be, after all? Would I ever be home if I stayed in Starfleet? Could such a thing exist?

When I got back from leave I asked Admiral Baker where I should go next. I told him that I’d asked Admiral Janeway for her opinion and she’d told me to find an operations posting on a tactical ship in the Alpha Quadrant. He chuckled softly. “And I’d recommend the same thing. You need to round yourself out. It’s the logical next step for you. Kind of ironic, coming from Kathryn.” He chuckled softly.

“Sir?”

“Admiral Janeway, well—how do I explain this—she’s never been exactly what she appears. The image she presents. Or what people choose to see, I guess. We met as lieutenants. Her father and fiancé had died a year and a half before. She had a reputation as the perfect junior officer—by the book, born into it, born for it—but when we met, she did a lot of reckless things—did them quietly, but still did them. She was great fun, honestly.” There was a ghost of a smile on his face. He paused, regarded me. “It’s ancient history, so I suppose I can tell you. I worked the opposite science shift from her and knew more than most. Activities that included…sneaking off the ship on unauthorized, personal expeditions, acquiring forbidden alien technologies and testing them out in our lab, hosting raucous parties on the holodeck well into the morning, pushing shuttles to their mechanical limits, stealing stimulants and dermal regenerators from sickbay.”

He paused, frowning slightly. “Of course, I covered for her when I could. In those days, there was never a question of some broader moral dilemma owed to the ship or the captain. You covered for each other. But I was relieved when the captain finally sat her down and issued her an ultimatum. And I was relieved when she responded accordingly.”

These were probably more sentences than Admiral Baker had ever previously spoken to me consecutively. I wanted some kind of a relationship with him. I didn’t expect it to form it talking about Admiral Janeway.

*

I’d dated a man during the early months of my first assignment as an ensign. It was simple enough: I showed up, and within several weeks I’d met a nice guy who asked me to dinner on the holodeck. We bonded over broken plasma relays and increasingly strange alien encounters on the outer edges of known space. We were happy enough, but I felt that I was holding something back. That he cared much more about me than I cared about him. In a sexual way, at least. He took care with my body, made sure that he pleased me. And he did, physically. I didn’t mind pleasing him, either. But being with him didn’t make my stomach drop or my heart race. And I wasn’t terribly upset when we parted ways.

I thought about women. Sometimes when I saw this tall, no-nonsense female commander with close-cropped hair walk down the corridor, my breath would catch in my throat. I’d had a similar reaction to Captain Rodriguez years before, I reminded myself. But I’d danced with and kissed a few women in my later years at the Academy, and it had never really felt right. Didn’t feel much different than anything with my recent boyfriend. Maybe it wasn’t the right man. Maybe it wasn’t the right woman. I figured that at some point it would be clear to me. Or that I’d find the right person. I didn’t have to worry, I told myself—this was the 24th Century, after all, and I didn’t have to choose.


	3. Describe

iii. Describe

I didn’t plan a shuttle excursion with Admiral Janeway. It just happened that way. I’d miraculously managed eight hours of sleep the night before, and nobody else on shift held both a current qualification and was legally well-rested enough to pilot the admiral and a few hangers-on to a technological summit on a Romulan deep space outpost.

I tried not to fret over the state of the cockpit, over the shuttle’s unnervingly blank mission records.

Admiral Janeway’s posse milled about in the back of the shuttle discussing quantum theory and transwarp travel. She sat in the co-pilot’s seat and began creating a mission log for me. I couldn’t help but grin.

“You know,” I said, “Sometimes I try to get my peers to do these things—to fill out their logs, to file reports. And they either don’t know they’re supposed to and look at me like I have three heads, or they ignore me.”

She laughed softly, and I continued. “And you know admiral, sometimes I wonder, if I’m 45 years old, and I’m still watching beta shift fail to turn in its mission logs and recordings, and only this time I’m the senior officer raising hell about it—what will have changed? What will I have accomplished here?”

Admiral Janeway smiled back at me, almost sadly. “Oh, Emily. You know that’s not the point. You already know these things never change. You’ve said so yourself, and it’s true. Ships get better trained, and then people leave, and then the ship starts from nearly-scratch again. And nobody knows up from down. You can’t focus on the task. You have to ask yourself why you’re doing this and focus on the person you’re training. The crewmember in front of you, and what you can do for him or her. Anything you teach that person…that won’t change. That will stay with them. It’s the only way any of this makes sense.”

I couldn’t do anything but nod. I already knew this to be true. It was more true than anything else I’d heard since arriving on our floating monstrosity of ship. And yet it could be so hard to carry out—what with subordinates and their insecurities, their inconsistencies, their maddening lapses in judgment. It took so much patience. I knew Admiral Janeway had honed this philosophy over seven years in space with the same crew. I knew that after 23 years in space, her self had been prepared to sacrifice millions for the lives of these few beloved. That they had become for her the home that all of us struggled to find. There had to be some kind of reasonable measure. Some kind of happy medium, I thought. But could there be? Could there really be a halfway version of this kind of love? And didn’t we all secretly want the all-out, no holds barred kind anyway? What else were we sticking around for? Properly recorded sensor logs of a mission that would soon be forgotten?

*

The shuffleboard table was coated with sand and resin. I knew what this was—Rick had been a fan of old Earth games. And there certainly hadn’t been much else to do on a ship where the tiny holodeck was almost always broken and power fluctuated regularly. I watched Commander Paris concentrate his gaze, pushing his puck right to the edge of the board. Admiral Janeway laughed, bent forward, and knocked his puck and her own off of the table with some force. “Damn,” she hissed. “I’d forgotten what a delicate touch this game requires.” Commander Paris snorted quietly and his eyes twinkled as they met Janeway’s. I don’t think I imagined what passed between them—something like energy and desire, an edge of it still sharp.

“Teams! Tom, let’s do teams!” Janeway called out over the din.

And that’s how I found myself standing opposite Kathryn Janeway, Starfleet legend, watching the curve of her collarbone, the slight flush at her neck, the concentration in her eyes, as she attempted to guide a metal puck to the very edge of a wooden plank.

Commander Paris’ visit had been a surprise. Something about experimental warp drives and propulsion technologies. A last-minute briefing to the four-stripe admiral. An early morning wake-up and departure planned. But he pressed for more rounds of shuffleboard and beer just the same.

As I left the holodeck to return to my quarters I literally ran into Admiral Janeway and Commander Paris in the corridor. I was a little tipsy. Well, we were all a little tipsy. I murmured my apologies and continued to my room, determined not to make a fool of myself.

“Emily!” Commander Paris called after me. I was surprised that he remembered my name. I turned and saw that he was alone, that Admiral Janeway had left.

He gestured for me to stand next to him. “Hey, I wanted to thank you for staying out with us tonight. I know you look out for the admiral, and I appreciate it. Sometimes…” he sighed, “She forgets. How many people love her. Depend on her. Forgets that we forgive her everything she won’t forgive herself.”

This was turning more serious than I’d anticipated. “No problem, sir,” I said. “Thank _you_. It was fun. The admiral’s amazing. She’s been a great help to me.” I stopped talking—no use in babbling more.

But even as I gave my farewells and turned away, I knew what Commander Paris was trying to say. He was describing the peculiar kind of grace through which subordinates, fully knowing their superior’s faults and flaws, could choose to lift that superior up and carry him or her through the challenges of the day, the battle, the coming weeks. You couldn’t ask to be carried. It either happened or it didn’t. I knew this myself—I’d been shocked when, as an ensign, I’d failed my section on ship-wide evaluations by inputting a series of incorrect keystrokes into the main computer, and my crewmen responded not with disgust and anger, but by running my diagnostics for me, recalibrating the sensors without being asked, and making sure the section’s replicators were fully charged.

And if this was what I experienced—on a fully-staffed, operational research vessel on a planned mission—I supposed I couldn’t begin to really understand the bond that existed between Admiral Janeway and her crew. What they’d forgiven each other, carried each other through.

*

I wasn’t looking forward to the gala on Deep Space 3. As a rule, these things meant more work for aides—updating schedules and itineraries, writing remarks, purchasing gifts, setting up tables. They were always a pain.

And then there was the question of dancing and drinking. With so much rank on the ship, who would be willing to make a fool of themselves unless somehow encouraged by the gala’s host? At this point, I didn’t have much faith in the big boss’s capacity for fun. It wasn’t the climate he’d encouraged thus far.

But when the night of the gala arrived, there was a curious energy in the air. Michelle and I toasted with sparkling wine and then traipsed through the empty ballroom together, leaving our admirals’ gifts at their appropriate settings.

The call to the mess was interrupted by cheers and whistles on three occasions. A bottle of alien rice wine passed through the room for shots before the first course was served. Admiral Baker smiled broadly as he downed his shot with Michelle and I. It was going to be a good night.

The food was surprisingly decent, and conversation flowed. As dinner ended, a tall, blond woman in a tight-fitting red dress approached Admiral Janeway’s table. _The Borg, the ex-Borg_ , Michelle whispered to me. _Dr. Annika Hansen—Seven of Nine. Seated with the Federation Science Council._ Admiral Janeway briefly spoke to her table’s server, and as another chair emerged her dining partners shifted and adjusted as Dr. Hansen sat down next to her. Admiral Janeway then gave Dr. Hansen her slice of cake.

My cake was good. My table’s company was good. And I was feeling pretty good by the time Admiral Janeway came and stood with Michelle and I later in the evening. She had just left Dr. Hansen’s side. I’d noticed that her hand had rested on the bare skin of the other woman’s back, that they’d been lost in conversation for a long time. That Dr. Hansen definitely could not hold her alcohol, pink-faced as she was after what appeared to be a few glasses of wine. And then even more pink-faced, as more shots of rice wine circulated. Admiral Janeway herself had been required to do all those introductory shots with alien dignitaries, and she swayed in a barely perceptible manner as she approached us.

I felt bold. “Ma’am, you promised me when you got really drunk you’d tell me all the dumb things you did when you were younger!” I half-yelled over the din in the general direction of the admiral’s ear.

“Well I’m not drunk enough yet!” She yelled back, grinning widely. I flagged down a server and snagged three shots of a clear, sweet-smelling fluid. Oh, but it kicked on the way down. We sucked in air deeply as we swallowed, breathing gutturally. Admiral Janeway came and stood next to me, leaning her chest against my shoulder, steadying herself against me. Lips next to my ear, she began to tell me the stories I’d asked for.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the ship’s chief of security, a captain whose presence had always vaguely bothered me, eye us with a lewd grin. On some level, I knew this wasn’t good, but I didn’t care. I let Admiral Janeway continue her story of youthful misadventures on Risa, reveling in her breath in my ear, the heat of her body, the soft pressure of her breasts just below mine. I loved that she transported back to her ship twenty seconds before it broke orbit. I loved that she was never caught or reprimanded for stealing that shuttle and hurtling her way through an unexpected ion storm. I loved that Admiral Baker helped her clean up their ship’s lounge five minutes before the four-stripe admiral arrived for an early breakfast. I already knew that all of these stories had a dark side, and I loved her still. Most of all, I loved that she was telling me these stories, whispering them in my ear in a conspiratorial tone that relied on loud, bad dance music, large amounts of alcohol, plausible deniability, and an unspoken willingness to forget. Or if not forget, never mention again.

Michelle came over with blue and raspberry colored shots. And an easy group dance began. We took the shot together, broke away from Admiral Janeway, and then proceeded to the dance floor. I swayed and turned and shook readily. This was easy. This felt so good. Michelle shimmied next to me, her advanced skills evident. I laughed wildly, dancing up on her. We danced for the next three or four songs, losing track of time, of our inhibitions, of our admirals. Feeling only heat and relief and the bass vibrating in our bones as the music blared.

Finally, we stepped off the floor and returned to our now-empty table. We found some water and drank gratefully. “Go collect your admiral,” the security captain said, walking up to me with a smirk, half-leering, his meaning clear. She wasn’t my admiral, and yet she was, and my admiration, attraction and generally worshipful feelings were so predictable, transparent, and juvenile—and yet completely understandable, and I was angry—drunk, and angry—at this captain for so easily picking apart and mocking something special to me, something I was trying to keep private. I looked around the dance floor, around the room. Admiral Janeway was nowhere to be seen.

I had no idea where the admiral had gone, but I excused myself from Michelle and walked, with surprising composure, out of the ballroom and down the corridor in search of her nonetheless. The promenade seemed deserted. I thought about turning around. But a dim light came from inside an otherwise closed lounge about 200 meters further down the corridor, and so I continued. I knew, instinctively, as I approached the lounge, that she was in there. It seemed important that she not see me, though I couldn’t have told anyone why. The door was half-open. It was dark except for one lamp in the far corner. I crept in on my hands and knees and crouched behind the bar. I could hear what sounded like sighing and murmuring.

Slowly raising my head up, hiding behind the taps and rows of glassware, I saw them. About six or seven meters away. Janeway pressed up against a viewport, her dress uniform jacket slung around a chair, moving her hands slowly, almost scientifically, along the exposed skin of Dr. Hansen’s back. Dr. Hansen trying to work the catch on the admiral’s pants, pressing her thigh between her legs.

I dropped back behind the bar. Shit. Was she in the middle of a new reckless phase?

I realized that I could see them. Could see them while remaining hidden behind the bar. The long mirror on the side of the room near the door reflected starlight from the viewport and their bodies into the mirror behind the bar. I supposed the mirrors had been placed and the angles of the room designed so that one could see the stars even while drinking at the bar. A clever trick. _I shouldn’t be here_ , I thought. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave. _What if they leave and I need to make sure they don’t do anything ridiculous in the corridor?_ I rationalized. I tried to still my hammering heart and listen.

“We’re drunk, Seven,” Janeway said, just loudly enough for me to hear. I watched her reflection try to still the other woman’s hands. My head swum and my heart pounded.

“Irrelevant. I desire you when I am sober. My...inhibitions...are just slightly lower now. Do not attempt to claim that the same is not true for you.”

I suppose that Janeway meant to sigh with frustration at this, but the sound was more a lust-filled drawl. “I do want you. I’ve always wanted you. But I can’t—oh god—be what you want, can’t hurt you. You need a life on your own.” Janeway’s voice had taken on a low, plaintively honest quality I’d only previously heard from her for a few moments at a time. Now, as it had before, this voice punctured something deep in my chest. Her hands appeared to cup Dr. Hansen’s face, tenderly. “It would be like cheating at life, being with me.”

“You consider me your child.” The tone indignant, almost mocking.

“I didn’t say that.” Janeway’s voice was hoarse, her inflection edged with a kind of warning.

“I have traveled the universe—” Dr. Hansen broke off, and her words took on a note of something approaching hysteria. Her reflection nearly shook in the mirror. “I have traveled the universe and you are what I desire. Leave Starfleet. Come with me.”

“You know I can’t do that.” I strained to hear this reply—it was little more than a whisper.

“You are afraid. You are afraid of your feelings. You have become less human than I am.”

This statement seemed to break something inside the admiral. “Enough talk,” Janeway half-growled, half-sobbed, pulling the other woman’s body against her own. “We’ll settle this in the morning.”

In the mirror, I watched Janeway’s leg wrap around Dr. Hansen’s thigh. They appeared to kiss desperately, as if they’d been starving for years. I watched Janeway’s head arch back against the glass of the viewport as Dr. Hansen cupped her breasts through her Starfleet-issue turtleneck. Watched that turtleneck come off, saw the reflection of Janeway’s bare torso exposed in the blurry half-starlight. I knew I had to get out of there.

Janeway, against the viewport, moved in rhythm with Dr. Hansen, her mouth open. “Seven, oh—Seven.” It was a low kind of moan, broken only by those words. My nipples hurt. I knew I was wet. I had to get out of there.

Suddenly the image of their entwined bodies fell off the mirror. I peered up from behind the bar. They had moved to a nearby couch. Janeway was on top of Dr. Hansen, peeling away her dress. Her pale, freckled back curved and shone towards me like a knife in the starlight. She seemed unbearably human and breakable, unbearably strong. I dropped to the ground and staggered out of the bar on my hands and knees. Shut the door behind me as quietly as I could manage. Reset the defaults of the lounge’s unsecured keypad and gave it the strongest code I could remember in my drunken, painfully aroused state.

I don’t know how I managed to remember where my temporary quarters were, or much about walking back to them. But once inside them, I tore off my uniform top and pants, stumbled to the head and emptied my bladder, and then toppled onto the unfamiliar bed. Finally alone, I brought my hand between my legs and came with a fierceness I had not known in years.


	4. Direct

iv. Direct

I knew Admiral Janeway wasn’t omnipotent, but I felt marked, after that. Felt sure that she knew, had to know, what I’d seen. I felt bad about it. I shouldn’t have watched for so long. Shouldn’t have been aroused. But I had been. Still kind of was.

I avoided her.

I had less than two months left. A year—that was the timeline they wanted for aides. Enough to get comfortable, enough to learn. But you can only wait on someone and make his or her coffee for so long.

I tried not to make it obvious. I didn’t want her to think that our drunken, physical conversation had scared me away. I wasn’t an ensign anymore; I wanted her to know that I could deal with a little impropriety or whatever it was. Could deal with these socially authorized breaches in protocol, which constituted a sort of protocol all of its own. Could return to the comfortable status quo like a mature adult. I spoke to her in a few meetings. I delivered a few padds for her. But I wasn’t ready to be alone with her again.

So I changed my mess hall schedule, and changed the routes I took to and from my admiral’s office. I worked really hard on a new proposal. I started building a continuity file for my replacement. I wrote my old captain and he replied back within a day. He was still on the edge of the Gamma Quadrant. He would be happy to have me back at any time. Whenever I decided it was best for my career. He didn’t seem to hold any of the stupid, imperfect things I’d done on his ship against me. Intellectually, I’d known that. But seeing it on a padd in front of me meant so much more.

I should have known that Admiral Janeway would catch up with me. If I’m honest with myself, I’ll admit that I actually wanted her to. Was craving, asking for some kind of confrontation, even as it terrified me. Because the idea that she wouldn’t care or notice scared me more.

I was sitting alone on the observation deck, working on my continuity file.

“Hard at work, Lieutenant Paltin?” I knew that voice anywhere. I sprang up, instinctively going to attention.

“Kahless, sit down,” Admiral Janeway implored in a slightly exasperated tone, taking the chair opposite mine. “You’ve been jumpier than a Vulcan sand flea. Care to tell me why?”

No, I didn’t. I certainly didn’t. I had to come up with something she’d believe. She leaned forward. I remembered her breasts, pale and rounded in the mirror’s reflection. I gulped.

“Ma’am, admiral…I…what I think…” I broke off. I stared at my hands.

“Yes?” She seemed to be getting a little impatient.

“What I mean to say admiral, is that it’s difficult. I’m working on a file for my replacement here”—I brandished my work—“and I’ve been thinking about how whenever I feel like I’m doing something well, like I’ve finally got it figured out, Starfleet makes me leave. Leaving my last ship was really difficult. And I guess, I don’t want to get more attached to…being here. Anymore than I already have, I guess.”

Her face softened. She appeared to believe it. To enjoy, even treasure, the implicit admission that I was attached to her, and a little afraid of that. Which was true. I mean, none of it was untrue. It just wasn’t the whole story. 

She moved her chair so that it was nearly touching mine and spoke very softly. “That’s not just Starfleet, Emily. That’s the nature of life itself. We go from place to place, learning things, trying our best to fit in, hoping that we can discover something big or contribute to the universe or help others in some way before we’ve moved on. Being able to do that…that’s the brilliant dream of life, of Starfleet, of any person. And usually the only way to do that…is with other people. Building relationships, taking things personally, experiencing pain—it can’t be avoided. It’s part of being human. It’s who you are.”

A thought flickered across my mind, unbidden—was she living this advice herself? Would she ever tell Dr. Hansen this? But mostly, I was so relieved and exhausted I wanted to weep. I knew I was breathing raggedly.

God, this was so embarrassing. But I couldn’t pull back. Now it was no longer me bluffing. She had undone me. I had fully regressed back to scared, honest ensign-land. 

“How are you so patient with me? Why are you doing this with me? Why me out of all the lieutenants and ensigns on this ship?”

I think she stifled a chuckle. “Don’t flatter yourself that you’re the only junior officer or crewman I’ve…prodded along here. But you have been…the most extensive and rewarding. You had the fire behind your eyes. Even when you were trying to act relaxed. I know that. I know that feeling in myself. I know my own desire to work harder, to make everything right. To have connections, to have relationships. And I knew what you needed.”

I nodded. I didn’t really know what to say to that.

“Do you think I always knew what I wanted, knew how to perform in a new position?”

“I don’t know admiral…maybe not?”

“No, I didn’t. I had people teach me.” She looked at me squarely. “Relationships we develop during assignments, even during these short postings, these feelings, they’re necessary…they’re also complicated. And that’s all right.” My heart nearly stopped. She was referring to my infatuation with her, my attraction to her. Which, I knew I had never hidden very well. And she was saying it didn’t bother her.

“Why do you think they’re necessary?” She asked.

“Uh...ma’am, they can motivate us to do things better. To push beyond our limitations. I guess I know that from my previous ship.”

I envisioned Admiral Janeway on the bridge of _Voyager_. Envisioned her yelling commands that would save her ship and three other neighboring planets. Envisioned her crew reacting to these orders, following them seamlessly, understanding her intent and adjusting their own actions accordingly. So few people really understood the time, the trust, the patience, and everything else that fed into the possibility of those moments.

“And what else do you know from your previous ship?”

“That they don’t really have to end, ma’am?”

“Yes. You know that our Starfleet relationships don’t ever really end—they evolve. You know that in this business, it’s rarely ever goodbye.”

She held my hands in her own deceptively small hands. “All I ask is that you pass it on. And know, that when I get a ship again, I’ll ask for you.”

*

The night before I debarked for leave on Earth I dreamed I saw my old professor. She stood without her cane on a garden path at the Academy, surrounded by flowering rhododendrons. Sunlight streamed around her. I felt a kind of peace I’d only known at the Academy in luminous, fleeting moments.

“Do you want to come home?” she asked me. She didn’t mean home to the Academy or Earth, or home to my old ship, or home to a reconciliation with her. She was asking if I wanted to come home to myself. To be at home in myself.

Yes. I did. I did want to. More than anything.

I sat up in bed with a start and took several deep breaths. I started to thank the universe for all of the people I loved, for the gift of this dream, for every struggle that had led me to this point. But I realized that wasn’t the point. The point was getting on with this business of knowing I was already home.

I smiled to myself and got out of bed.


End file.
